


Sunlight of a Thousand Years

by Byacolate



Category: Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 00:32:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16315667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: A shade, a wisp of a beloved voice caressed his soul with calloused hands.





	Sunlight of a Thousand Years

**Author's Note:**

> The baroness depicted here is a dwarf with lawful good-neutral good tendencies, but is otherwise fairly nondescript. Contains spoilers up to the Rushlight Tournament.

There was nothing before him but darkness, yet he knew the cadence of her footfalls as intimately as a temple bell. In his most heretical moments, he might admit they were nearly quite as sacred.

 

“Why did you come here?”

 

She did not understand, and could not. The depths of his betrayal would be unfathomable. Or perhaps the living truth was that he would rather she never try their fathoming.

 

Ekundayo was with her, and his coarse words struck Tristian like a knife. The blade could not be dulled by his purpose, and for that Tristian was grateful. Octavia's fervent optimism cut him to the quick. 

 

He did not call to them, for he was afraid. His voice wavered as he demanded an answer from she who he had wronged. The cold and crumbling stone of Candlemere's decrepit tower was all he could grasp for balance when her long silence sent him stumbling back.

 

What weighty words lay in wait for him, poised tigerous and ready to strike him down? Would that he could see her face, to know the words upon that tongue from one look into her eyes. Never again.

 

_ Let go _ , he entreated within the hollow cage of his heart.  _ Let me go. _

 

Her voice was sonorous in the darkness between them. Even the gales around the island seemed to still for her. Tristian's hands shook upon the stone.

 

“I will not forsake you.”

 

It was an answer that bubbled his soul lighter than air in the same moment deep and blackened oily fingers gripped at his heart and sank it deep into the pit of his stomach. It was hope and hopelessness punctuated by the desperate hand he wanted to hold out to her and dug into stone instead. 

 

If anyone could… but, no. No mortal were as powerful as the vision of viciousness coiled in the back of his conscience like a cobra. Not even the baroness.

 

He brought her to her doom on a silver platter. It was she who was forsaken.

 

“You ought,” he croaked, and fled.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

_ Heed my prayer, burn my heart. _

 

When he was on his knees, Sarenrae did not come. To feel betrayed was cowardice, and this cowardice was sin. But he was afraid, so afraid. 

 

_ Heed my prayer. Purify me by your fire. _

 

Feverish prayers fell from his lips. Though he anticipated retribution from she who would destroy, he turned his face toward the Dawnflower. He would never again see Her light, but one day he might feel Her warmth. It would take a thousand years of repentance to deserve it, but it was never too early to beg. He knew the venomous nymph was near, yet the familiar practice of meditative prayer had sunk his consciousness mercifully inward. If he went deeper still, she might strike him and he would not feel it. If he went even deeper, he might feel nothing again but the Healing Light.

 

Nyrissa's cold and nettled fingers cupped his chin and turned his face toward her. Sweat pooled at his temples, at the hollow of his throat. He was not deep enough.

 

_ Save me from evil. _

 

When Nyrissa's talons left him unrent, he slipped further in, chasing Sarenrae's deep abiding light. He would seek and seek until his soul was dust, if that was what She demanded. The world pulsed on around him, a dull and troubled thing. What had he wrought? What had he done? 

 

A shade, a wisp of a beloved voice caressed his soul with calloused hands - not Sarenrae, but just nearly as holy. He swallowed, though his mouth was dry. Was this part of his punishment as well? And was it Sarenrae or Nyrissa who saw fit to stick his heart with pins and watch his heartblood seep with the sound of her voice? 

 

Or could it be him? Did he so long for her that even here in his deepening state, he sought her voice as a comfort? The mortal. The baroness. The hound. And if he indulged, would it be sacrilege?

 

Perhaps not. But it would be more than he deserved.

 

_ I beg you, hear me… _

 

When he was on his knees, Sarenrae did not come. 

 

She who pulled him from dark waters with unerring and bullheaded mercy was of another sort entirely.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Forgiveness, he found, tasted of honey from the comb, sweetness sticking to his tongue and his fingers and his soul. Even when it was not Sarenrae's. Perhaps especially then.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

_ “I will not forsake you,” _ she had said, and even in memory Tristian could almost taste the steel in her eyes. All the long walk home it was tumbled within his thoughts, such a thing now woven like golden threads into the fabric of his soul. 

 

What could he have done to earn such fealty? Nothing, not once. It troubled and soothed him in quaking measures, like skiff being tossed about on a rolling sea.

 

_ “I will not forsake you,” _ she had said, and meant it with every beat of her noble heart. Since his time on the mortal plane, Tristian had heard of the stubbornness of dwarves. He could not say he had ever known it to be anything but a blessing. 

 

The steps he took to the capital city faltered only for his blindness. He would await her there for as long as it took. His recompense was to be his loyalty, and he would give it for all his days.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

In the capital he was given a wide berth by his old friends. Strangers and acquaintances held no grudge against him, for they did not know the truth of it; it was strange, they said, for him to disappear from the baroness’ side, but they were pleased with his return and they mourned his sight. He could not blame her ladyship's close circle for their reticence to welcome him back. Indeed, if their hearts were all as open as the baroness’, he might have had to yield to Nyrissa the foolishness of mortals after all.

 

When first she called on him to venture with her after his betrayal, they brought him no closer into the fold. He fought by their side, and walked at unfavorable speeds with the aid of a staff so as not to burden them further with his company. 

 

It was not in him to feel shame the first time his boots clipped upon a stone and sent him stumbling forward. He would not allow it. Tristian would beg for no pity, no slower pace. He would be no burden for the baroness. 

 

Even as he vowed it, reaching out over the ground for his misplaced staff, Octavia's sweet voice murmured, “Here, I've got it,” and broad hands eased him up. Octavia clumsily nudged the staff into his hands and the baroness did not take her hand from his arm until Tristian pulled himself away. 

 

She did not call for them to slow, but she would not be moved from his side as they followed their path. “Ahead, to the left. A fallen branch,” she would say, or, “There is a crack in the road, five paces hence. Yes, Jubilost, they will be repaired in due time. Here, Tristian, lengthen your stride.”

 

When they made camp for the night, Tristian held tight to his staff with both hands, quietly waiting to be assigned his role. A strange lump rose in his throat when Linzi was sent to hunt. It had been his duty for so long that it felt… No, it was no matter. Many things were bound to change. His actions bore consequences, and he would honor them. 

 

A touch upon his elbow drew Tristian from his thoughts. “Yes?”

 

“Come.” The baroness coaxed him forward and stopped him near a great heat. The campfire crackled and popped before them, and when the baroness let him go, he stood still. A deep aching hope in him rose that she would not leave him to sit idle while the others had their duties. “Sit.”

 

The thump of a hand on wood drew him down and to the right. Tristian caught her shoulder for balance when he nearly missed the log. “Sorry. Thank you.”

 

“Give me your hands.”

 

He laid the staff in his lap and turned them both to her, palms up. In one hand she lay the hilt of a blade and carefully curled his fingers around it; in the other, she placed something hefty, damp, and hard. When he brought it to his face to smell it, Tristian recognized the dull and earthy scent of a freshly washed potato. “We'll get the rest prepared for when Linzi returns with game,” she said lowly. The sounds of the dinner pot accompanied his slow methodical peeling, and each time he was finished (or believed he must be), she set another root in his hand. 

 

When Linzi returned and the meat was cooking, Tristian recognized the scent straightaway. His stomach groaned with want and his mouth was as wet as his eyes. 

 

By the time they lay down to rest, the warm weight of shepherd's pie stuck to his ribs in a way he'd never thought to miss - in a way he never imagined he wouldn't have again.

 

Tristian did not weep over something as simple and beautiful as shepherd's pie. Yet in his heart he truly feared he might.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

It was a curious thing. Disastrous and lamentable and deeply regrettable, but curious to his ancient mind that she would choose to seek him out him when Brevoy was crumbling. 

 

Thoughts and thoughts on his treachery were all he knew sometimes, but this baffled and dismayed him. There was so much at stake - at least, to the eye of a mortal. Upon one side of the grandiose set of scales the baroness held in her grasp sat all of Brevoy, a powerful ally to whom fealty was owed, and the lives of countless soldiers, and the heart and esteem of poor Amiri, and a noble advisor. On the other side was perched a traitor.

 

He had not meant to tip the balance; indeed, he could not fathom how it was so. The baroness was reasonable, calculating but fair. If the choice were his, he would have begged the other outcome. 

 

How could he prove himself worth the lives of so many? Tristian did not agree with her. He could not. But neither could he be ungrateful for the mercy bestowed upon him.

 

It was curious, and frightening. It meant something. It had to mean something. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

“A crown is a strange and weighty thing.”

 

The release of all pretenses when they were alone was a balm unto Tristian's spirit. He was a being not of this world, and in private moments he was no longer beholden to that lie. As for the new queen, she seemed to feel a similar reprieve; she was a dwarf who favored her pipe and the solace of prayer to her god. And she did not, as it seemed, like crowns.

 

Tristian kept his voice light, shifting in the chair in the corner of her room. It was comfortable here, and quiet. A place for meditation over the statuette in his hands. “You do not care for it?”

 

The thud of finality when gold fell to stone lifted a corner of his mouth.

 

“I do not care for it.”

 

If he listened carefully, he could hear the whisper of her braid being undone. Tristian set aside the idol and held out a hand. “May I test its weight?”

 

The barest scrape of it across the floor made him wince. Four steps later she placed it in his hands. “I cannot imagine it would seem heavy at all to you.”

 

“No?” He felt along the metal, still warm from the heat of her body. 

 

“... No.”

 

The dryness of her tone tipped the scales of his mirth until he was smiling fully. “Because I was once a deva?”

 

“Strength must be measured by a different metric to the angelic host.”

 

He set the crown on her desk. “You are not incorrect. Our physical strength was supreme, but inconsequential. We were not measured by the weight we could carry in mass.”

 

“No, I don't suppose you were.”

 

She clasped his shoulder, drying the tongue in his mouth. It had only been five years; he was not yet used to the tremors that skittered through his flesh at her touch. “You did not join me to meditate on my crown. Come - what is on your mind?”

 

Relieved to have a focus for his thoughts, Tristian nodded. “Yes. Yes, There is a dilemma with a few of your faithful, and I believe we can make it right…”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

Irovetti us a cur. Tristian knew it before, but it had taxed him in the abstract. Irovetti's crimes had wounded his friends, neighbors, and many wayward souls. In the face of all of their woes, his personal affront to Tristian was paltry.

 

But oh, it vexed him to hear the ignoble scoundrel invite the queen into his bed. 

 

For one deep crushing moment he wished he could see the disdain upon her face. Tristian knew her best when she looked unimpressed, so he pictured what he he could from his memory in the wake of her silence and smiled to himself. It was not in Tristian's nature to be smug, but were it ever warranted, even once, it was when the object of his ardor rebuffed the advances of a king. 

 

The Rushlight Tournament seemed a trivial distraction from their duties, but Tristian was not ignorant to the social demands of nobility. It was a comfort to know that she seemed as skeptical of the affair as he. 

 

But the tournaments were also good fun for their friends, and Tristian could hardly fault them for finding joy in outrageous pleasures. They were only mortal, after all. The queen must have felt the same in this regard as well, for how she encouraged their companions to participate in the events. She cared for them, and he knew that the pride in her voice when they returned from their trials victorious was not born of patriotism.

 

Tristian's guard was lowered, his comfort restored when he navigated a drunken bully from the queen's sight. He was therefore ill-prepared for the moment Irovetti bestowed pet names upon her. He did not let his displeasure show, only allowing himself a silent step closer to her upon such a foul declaration. 

 

The moment the fireworks began was the truest scourge on his senses. They'd not even properly begun before a hand was at Tristian's elbow, shepherding him through the crowd. He called her name and she assuaged his worries, pulling him through innumerable bodies until they thinned, and then slowed to a stop. The shattering crack of the fireworks sent unpleasant tremors through Tristian's hands with each burst, and the queen wasted no time dragging him into a tent. It did nothing at all to stifle the racket of the fireworks, nor the cheering of the virulent crowd.

 

But then he heard, “Here, be still,” and his white hood was swept back. Tristian nearly swallowed his tongue, but he obeyed, stilling himself as a warm weight was placed over his ears. With it came not silence, but a blessed muffling of noise. He lifted his hands to adjust the earmuffs, his fingers brushing the leather of her gloves. It was a simple kindness, but she must have had great foresight to think of him thusly. 

 

“You are good to me,” he murmured, uncertain if she would hear him when he could not even hear himself. The brush of her fingers against his wrist told him little, though it made him feel something tremendous and bright. Unburdened by self-consciousness in this limbo of sound, he swallowed and pressed, “I care for you deeply. You are gracious and wise, and I -” The hand around his wrist squeezed tight. He was braver and more afraid than he could yet express. “You, who would not forsake me, whether the trial was great or small… I yearn for you. I yearn most ardently.”

 

When a pair of fingers brushed his jaw, he startled. They did not disappear though he flinched. Something about their steadfastness touched him deeply, far more deeply than his quiet words could express. The brush of leather against his lips sent the embers within his chest smoldering. They seemed to speak without words. They seemed to say:  _ You yearn for that which you possess.  _ And in so saying, they made him feel a fool.

 

Those fingers pinched his chin, holding him still for the warm dry press of flesh against his cheek before she moved away from him. Only the ghost of her touch down his curtain of hair was left before even that faded. Tristian wanted to chase after it, and wanted assurance that it would be welcome. 

 

He was overcautious, forever tentative to take a single step to cross the bridge that she'd built for him. How long would he make her wait? How long would he sit and break apart the growing cavernous honeycomb making a sweet and dripping mess of his heart?

 

She scooped his hands up where they lay balled in his lap and smoothed his knuckles. How long until he held himself accountable for the cherished tether between them?

 

“If you can hear me, I beg you to kiss me once more,” he entreated, sliding one cautious finger after another through hers. 

 

Sarenrae did not often hear him these days, or if she did, she did not answer him. Yet no matter to whom Tristian directed his pleas, it was the queen who answered. She had done it a thousand times before, and in spite of the cacophony outside and his own timid heart, she did not fail him now. She captured and captivated him with the press of her mouth, his lower lip cradled between both of hers. She released it to press her tongue to its bow, and then caught him up again at the corner of his mouth. Her hand delved into his hair, drawing dizzying spirals of lightning through his skin as she tugged. A hundred-hundred tiny pinpricks of pain across his scalp struck him in such staunch contrast to the tender press of her lips. 

 

When she pulled back, loosening her grip in his hair, Tristian could feel the tether between them pull taut. After so long spent humoring one tentative step at a time, it was a stumble that had led Tristian's feet to run. 

 

Tristian was a newborn foal to touch, but he had never been ignorant in the ways of love.  

 

“If you love me, good lady, then I would beg another.”

 

She bore him down upon the bedroll there, and Tristian knew nothing but a mantra of joy for the rest of the long dark night.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing a high fantasy comic about a wandering bard! [Check it out from the beginning HERE!](https://bardbouquet.tumblr.com/post/179195348759/a-dwarven-heirloom-a-blade-in-the-dark-and-a)
> 
>  
> 
> "Remembering a thousand autumns, with sunlight of a thousand years upon his lips and his eyes gone blind with leaves." - Sylvia Plath
> 
> My Tumblr: [wardencommando](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).  
> Details about fic reque$t$ [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/post/175675914506)  
> 


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